PARIS: French Prime Minister Michel Barnier’s hard-won new government faced pressure from day one on Sunday, as it came under fire from opponents on both the left and far right — which are now the largest blocs in parliament.
Eleven weeks of negotiations after President Emmanuel Macron called spot National Assembly elections finally ended Saturday with his announcement by a cabinet that marked a significant shift to the right.
The new cabinet’s first meeting is scheduled for Monday afternoon.
But opposition politicians from the left have already said they will challenge Barnier’s government with a confidence motion, with far-right politicians also slamming its composition.
In the July election, a left-wing alliance called the New Popular Front (NFP) won the most parliamentary seats of any political bloc, but not enough for an overall majority.
Veteran far-right leader Marine Le Pen meanwhile saw her National Rally emerge as the single largest party in the Assembly.
Macron had argued that the left would be unable to muster enough support to form a government that would not immediately be brought down in parliament, and rejected a National Rally candidate over the party’s extremist legacy. He turned instead to Barnier to lead a government drawing mostly on parliamentary support from Macron’s allies, as well as from the conservative Republicans (LR) and the centrists groups — even though the LR came in fourth in the June snap election.
